


The Butterfly Effect

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: It turned out the answer to 'who says a witch can't hunt witches?' was 'just about everyone'. But Chloe still has friends.





	The Butterfly Effect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



It turned out the answer to 'who says a witch can't hunt witches?' was 'just about everyone'. 

Chloe can't say she was particularly surprised to find that out, given the people she knew in New York and the general bent of the opinions they had, which she supposes was what made the situation easier (if still not exactly easy). She'd had a lot of acquaintances before she'd met Kaulder, the way you inevitably just kind of do when you own and operate a semi-popular, reasonably successful leisure establishment for a certain kind of clientele the way she did, but those acquaintances had never really been _friends_. She'd made sure of that, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not.

Frankly, she'd always been a little too preoccupied with keeping her gift a secret for her to really get close to anyone. She'd never really minded; that was just the way it had to be for her, if she didn't want to draw the wrong attention or get treated like some kind of freak. In a strange kind of way, how people started to avoid her after they found out about her change in employment and that little thing she could do seemed like it was almost more truthful. After all, it's not like she has to make-believe about her gift anymore. People know. People look at her strangely. Some of them are scared, and some of them are jealous.

Kaulder, of course, doesn't give a damn if she's a dreamwalker. Kaulder, of course, doesn't care at all that a witch probably shouldn't hunt witches. She knows that because he's been training her to do it anyway. 

\---

She stayed in the guest room at Kaulder's place for a couple of weeks after the whole witch queen debacle, while he was away hiding the heart who knew where. She remembers snooping through all of his stuff as if she could really get to know him that way, but all she really found out was that he wore a lot of black (which she already knew), he owned a lot of antiques (any one of which was probably worth more than everything she had left in the world combined) and his YouTube account was subscribed to eight different channels full of cute cat videos. 

She remembers texting Miranda about that last part, but she didn't reply. It had turned out Miranda had managed to fake her own death somehow rather than meeting a sticky end at Belial's hands the way they'd thought she had, but her being alive apparently didn't mean she was talking to Chloe any more than if she _had_ died. Chloe guessed she understood that, given what had happened. 

Three days in, Dolan came round with two bags of groceries and a sports bag full of Chloe's clothes, like he knew she didn't feel a lot like going home at that precise moment in time. It wasn't just that she'd almost been kidnapped from there; there was also broken glass all kinds of cleaning required and honestly, she just wasn't feeling that much like finding pieces of scattered lightbulb with her bare feet. 

"What do I call you, anyway?" she asked Dolan, while he was humming to himself over a pan on the hob in the kitchen. She'd told herself she wasn't going to follow him in there but in the end she'd done it anyway; she sat on the granite counter, swinging her legs, her heels catching the cupboard doors every now and then but the fuzzy bunny slippers _someone_ had left out for her (she can honestly say she wasn't sure she wanted to know which one of them it was, and she's never found the will to ask) muffled the sound quite well. 

"Dolan," he replied, glancing at her for a second before he turned back to the pan. "It's what I've been called for the past fifty years, at least. And I'm afraid all of the identity documents I have these days are very well-made forgeries." 

"Do I get a new identity?" she asked, not pointing out how weird it was for the Church to make fake ID. 

"Do you want one?" he replied.

"Do I _need_ one?"

"I'm already looking into it," he said, and he smiled with a shrug in her direction. "Well, it doesn't hurt to be prepared."

She couldn't exactly say that he was wrong about that and afterwards, while they ate cheese omelettes at Kaulder's kitchen table, they bonded unexpectedly over memories of eating fish and chips with wooden forks on the Brighton seafront, seagulls squawking for scraps because apparently seagulls have never been any different. He hadn't been back to England in years except for work and when she asked, he said he missed it sometimes. Sometimes, she had to admit she missed it, too. 

"You can take a peek at my memories of it, if you like," he told her, later, when both of them were sitting on one of Kaulder's immaculate couches, and she made a face. "I gather you don't like to use it, but you _do_ have a gift." 

"It's not that I don't appreciate the thought," she said. She drew up her legs, bunny slippers and all, and wrapped her arms around her knees. "You but _are_ the priest who broke into my apartment to bring me clean underwear. Who knows what I might find rattling around in there." 

"Touché," he replied, with an amused chuff of laughter. "Though I swear I closed my eyes. If you change your mind..."

She nodded. She didn't have a particularly long list of people she could call on; she had a feeling if she ever did decide to practice, he'd probably find his way onto the shortlist. And who knew - maybe one day it would come in handy.

Six days later, she watched the sunset over the sea at Brighton, sitting on a bench next to Dolan. He was twenty-two years old and his name was Jack. Eight months later, he met Kaulder; that day, eight months later, he became the thirty-sixth Dolan of the Axe and Cross. He hasn't gone by his real name since, but sometimes he lets her call him it. 

By the time Kaulder came home, she'd left his apartment and gone back to hers. Dolan helped her sweep up every last speck of the broken glass, but she wore the bunny slippers just in case. These days, when she's out of town, he comes by to look after the plants.

"There's a lot he can teach you, you know," he told her, once they'd finished, while she was making him a coffee - black, because they'd forgotten to buy milk and all the dreamwalking in the world couldn't magic up a pint of semi-skimmed. "You don't get to be eight hundred years old without picking up a thing or two." 

By the time Kaulder came home, she was ready to learn.

By the time Kaulder came home, she'd made a friend.

\---

"You're here to stop me," she said. 

"Y'know, I'm really not," Kaulder replied. 

"So you're not here to smite me or whatever it is you do to the really bad ones?"

"Not even a little bit." 

He took a seat, apparently unperturbed by the preponderance of ash and who knew what else that covered every surface of what was left of the bar she'd once owned. He just dusted off the least damaged-looking chair that he could find with the back of his hand and sat down on it, just outside the circle she'd scuffed into the ash and debris with the toe of her boot. She'd learned rather quickly that magic didn't have to be pretty, it just had to work; Kaulder had been responsible for that. It was pretty much the first thing he'd taught her, five months earlier, when he'd started to train her. The candles she'd lit were really just because the charred remains of the bar understandably still had no power coming to it for the lights.

"Y'know, this is why Dolan keeps telling you to read the book," he said, tilting his head at her as she knelt down in the circle. "There's no rule that says you can't cast a restoration spell, you just can't cast one on a _person_ or that's cutting kinda close to necromancy. Legality's not the reason nobody does it anymore. No one does it because it's _really hard_."

"Well, aren't you just a font of knowledge," she said, and Kaulder grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Honestly, he is. Dolan was right: you really don't get to be eight-hundred years old without picking up a thing or two. Or ten. Or ten thousand. He knows more about magic than any witch she's ever met. He just can't use it.

The spell didn't work - it just sort of fizzled a bit and Chloe huffed and blew her hair out of her eyes. Kaulder chuckled to himself across the room. 

"Well, what did you expect?" she said. "You never did believe me about public speaking."

Kaulder shook his head. "That's not it," he replied. "You think you don't have the juice." 

"And what if I do think that?"

"Then you're wrong." He leaned forward, his forearms to his knees. "I keep telling you, it's not about power. You're either born with magic or you're not, you have it or you don't. You have it. I don't." 

"Then why are you the only one who's ever told me that?"

"Because I'm the only one old enough to remember that's how it is." He tilted his head the other way. He narrowed his eyes. "You're what, a fourth level witch?"

She shrugged. "That's what my licence says." 

"What does level four mean?" 

"Well, it means I can legally make and sell potions to the general community without being smited by the Witch Hunter, for a start." 

"What does it mean about your power? What's the difference between you and a level five, or a level ten?"

"They can do more." 

"Why?"

"Because they just _can_." 

"Bullshit." He sat back suddenly. "Do you think there were always levels?"

"Probably not, but that's progress for you." 

"It's pretty much the opposite of progress. The only difference between you and a level ten or a level thirteen or a member of the council is what you know. You can be taught. But the best witches are always the ones with a little imagination." 

He stood up. He walked around the room, idly sweeping ash and broken glass from counters, making charred floorboards creak with his weight. "You remember what this place was like before?"

"Of course I do." 

"Close your eyes," he said. "Picture it. Think about the weight of the glasses. The smell of the bottles. The light. The places where the varnish had gotten worn off of the bar. Can you see it?"

"Yes." 

"Say the words. But do it while you keep that picture in your head." 

She could feel it working before she saw it; she didn't need to see it to know it was working. She chanted the words under her breath just like she had before but somehow not quite like she had before, and she could hear the room moving and she could _feel_ the room moving, she could feel her arms getting heavier, and her head felt foggy, and in the end she had to stop before it was really completely done or she had a feeling she'd have passed out right there in the middle of the floor. And okay, so it wasn't perfect, it wasn't everything it'd been and there was still ash on the floor and some of the glasses looked like they'd been run over and then struck by lightning and then run over again, but most of it was there. 

"It's not right," she said, but she was smiling despite the deformed glassware. 

"That's just stamina," he said. "You'll get better at it." 

He reached out a hand to her. She took it, and he helped her to her feet. She leaned against him; he let her. She's pretty sure he would've carried her if she'd needed him to.

It's been eight months since then. She's got better.

She's never had a teacher quite like Kaulder is.

\---

To absolutely no one's great surprise, it turned out Kaulder is the world's worst wingman. 

Okay, so it turned out that he wasn't a particularly bad sort of guy for an immortal, centuries-old witch hunter, but that really hadn't - at least not in the time they'd known each other - had a particularly positive effect on the situation at hand. Chloe's new job was seriously getting in the way of her previously already mostly non-existent social life; or, more precisely, palling around with the burly gent who spent the majority of his time sending bad witches to magical prisons really hadn't done a lot for her image. Or maybe it had, but it had done nothing good. Honestly, she hadn't expected it to. Honestly, she hadn't expected that to bother her.

When the bar was ready to reopen, after a week sweeping up the rest of the mess with Dolan's help and a splash of magic, it took some time to get anyone to set foot in there again at all, and that was just staff. Chloe called everyone who'd worked there and offered them their jobs back, but they all said no even if they weren't working and that was if they even answered her call. It wasn't like she could manage the place full-time while she was a full-time witch hunter, so she almost changed her mind. She almost sold the place. Kaulder would probably have let her sponge off him indefinitely, but pride said she couldn't and the magically renovated bar was all she had to support herself. 

That was when Miranda called. She said she'd manage the place for her. All Chloe had to do was help her to keep the bar stocked; she said she could do that, and they struck a deal.

At first, it was only work. Chloe went in during the days when she wasn't busy with Kaulder and she mixed potions in the back room, and sometimes Miranda was there doing the books or she'd bring in fresh supplies. But time passed. They talked. Miranda smiled sometimes. Sometimes, Chloe smiled back. It wasn't like it had been before, but Chloe honestly wasn't sure what it was like.

"Is it true you're a dreamwalker?" Miranda asked one morning, after the bar was closed. Chloe had come in early, and Miranda was leaving late. 

She didn't deny it. There was really no point. She told her the truth: she's a dreamwalker. Miranda just nodded and went on with her work.

Three days later, they ran into each other again. Four days after that, again. Miranda perched on a stool in the workroom while Chloe mixed their stock potions, chopping herbs Miranda had brought in from her warehouse. Miranda brought the night's take through with her and counted it out on the counter. Miranda asked about the case she and Kaulder had just closed, so she told her. She didn't seem appalled the way most people did, at least not even half as much. She looked like one day she might even understand.

And then, one night, months later, Miranda spilled a drink over her top and she pulled it off over her head and when she looked up, she caught Chloe watching. She went to her, around the bench, took the knife from her hand and set it down on the worktop. She brought Chloe's hand up to the tattoo there at her breastbone and the butterfly fluttered under Chloe's fingertips; it took off and flew away, over her skin, behind one shoulder, like it had never been there at all. She shook her head and her hair shimmered from dark brown to bright blonde then back again, while Chloe watched. 

"You're not the only one who ever had a secret," Miranda said. 

Chloe understood. Illusion was the way she'd survived Belial. Illusion is always considered a black gift, just like dreamwalking is. Kaulder, on the other hand, says there are no black gifts, there are only gifts - when Miranda stepped in closer, when Miranda pressed her lips to hers, she had to admit she felt more gifted than not.

It's been months since then. These days, Miranda answers when Chloe texts her, but these days, Miranda's pretty much living in Chloe's loft. It just sort of happened, gradually, not that Chloe minds. She likes to watch the butterfly flutter all over Miranda's skin. She likes to chase it with her fingertips. Miranda likes to guide them, to her mouth, between her thighs.

"You know, I came back because Kaulder asked me to," Miranda told her, earlier tonight, as the butterfly beat its wings underneath Chloe's fingers just like the beating of her heart. She smiled. They kissed. She turned off the lights.

She has to wonder if Kaulder's maybe not such a bad wingman after all.


End file.
